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Stories from the bricks
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| H&N photo by Jill Aho Charles Higbee served in the U.S. Air Force from March 1948 to May 1970. A friend purchased a brick honoring his service in Veterans Memorial Park, which he found after a good deal of searching Sunday. |
Veterans recall time in the military at Veterans Memorial
By JILL AHO
H&N Staff Writer
Charles Higbee was glad he didn’t give up the search Sunday morning. Somewhere, amid the hundreds of bricks honoring veterans at Veterans Memorial Park, was a brick with his name on it.
“A friend said he bought a brick for me,” Higbee said as he studied the names, searching for his own. “I thought it was very thoughtful.”
Higbee, 79, spent 22 years serving in the U.S. Air Force, joining in March 1948 and retiring from service in May 1970. The lure for Higbee was the idea of flying.
“The reason I joined the Air Force was because I was crazy about airplanes and I wanted to fly,” he said. “But I was too short to fly.”
Higbee said the next best thing was to be a radio operator, which, at the time, meant a chance to be on the airplanes. His chosen position required the most difficult school with 32 weeks of training. When he got to his first assignment, he was told once again he was too short to fly, even as a radio operator.
Higbee became an instructor for the next three years.
“As time went on, the only place for radio operators was in the boonies,” he said. Higbee found himself assigned to a remote radio operation 220 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska.
He wasn’t happy. When he returned to the lower 48, he went back to school to learn data processing, which later became computer processing. After an assignment in Europe, he began teaching computer use.
“I had a home computer in 1978. It was the biggest home computer made,” he said.
The computer’s memory was 126 kilobytes. There are more than 1 million kilobytes in a gigabyte, the standard measure of home computer hard drive memory now.
“It was tiny,” Higbee said. “Physically it wasn’t tiny, but in storage capacity and ability, it was tiny.”
Higbee became an instructor at Oregon Institute of Technology, where he taught industrial management, after leaving the Air Force.
Danny Williams
Danny Williams and his mighty Chihuahua, Stormy, were on a mission Sunday morning to find Williams’ brick in Veterans Memorial Park.
Williams, a Vietnam-era veteran of the U.S. Navy, bought a brick in the park for the father of a friend. When he told her about the purchase, he was surprised to learn that she had bought a brick for him.
Williams served from 1972 to 1985, spending most of his time on ships as a hull technician. His welding experience carried him through civilian life, where he spent a total of 35 years as a welder.
“I spent my whole stint in the service on ships,” he said. Thanks to some experience deep-sea fishing, Williams already had his sea legs. But, he recalled, the Navy ships were a little different.
“We were in the Philippines and we got hit by a typhoon,” he said. “We had to go right back out to sea.”
Williams said he was 17 when he did his first tour in Vietnam.
“What a wake-up call,” he said. “It was horrific. Thank God I was over there for the end of it.”
After becoming disabled at his job as a welder, Williams has decided to return to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor. He appreciated the memorial.
“They’ve really done a nice job here,” he said. “It’s nice they’re doing something for the vets.”
Bob Reinke
Bob Reinke, 64, served in the U.S. Navy during a period of transition in the 1960s. The Vietnam War was ending and the Cold War was just starting. The U.S. Navy had both World War II-era submarines in use as well as nuclear-powered ones. Reinke said comforts were much different between the two.
The conventional submarines were hard living, Reinke said. They were hot, cramped and old. The nuclear subs, which Reinke was assigned to during the latter part of his duty, were used during Cold War missions.
“We were following Russian subs around,” he said. “We were there when the Pueblo was captured. That got very tense.”
The USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea in January 1968, and 82 of its 83 crewmembers were held captive for 11 months. One crewmember was killed.
The Cold War was a time of spying and intimidation, Reinke said. “It was like playing chess, a global chess game.”
Reinke found a brick with his name on it Sunday afternoon with his wife, Debbie, who bought the brick for him for his birthday.
“It’s kind of a funny feeling, I guess,” he said. “This spans a lot of wars. These bricks have a lot of stories, some good, some bad. You try to remember the good.”
The good things Reinke remembers are the closeness of the crews, the peacefulness of being deep in the ocean, and the taste of fresh baked bread.
“A friend said he bought a brick for me,” Higbee said as he studied the names, searching for his own. “I thought it was very thoughtful.”
Higbee, 79, spent 22 years serving in the U.S. Air Force, joining in March 1948 and retiring from service in May 1970. The lure for Higbee was the idea of flying.
“The reason I joined the Air Force was because I was crazy about airplanes and I wanted to fly,” he said. “But I was too short to fly.”
Higbee said the next best thing was to be a radio operator, which, at the time, meant a chance to be on the airplanes. His chosen position required the most difficult school with 32 weeks of training. When he got to his first assignment, he was told once again he was too short to fly, even as a radio operator.
Higbee became an instructor for the next three years.
“As time went on, the only place for radio operators was in the boonies,” he said. Higbee found himself assigned to a remote radio operation 220 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska.
He wasn’t happy. When he returned to the lower 48, he went back to school to learn data processing, which later became computer processing. After an assignment in Europe, he began teaching computer use.
“I had a home computer in 1978. It was the biggest home computer made,” he said.
The computer’s memory was 126 kilobytes. There are more than 1 million kilobytes in a gigabyte, the standard measure of home computer hard drive memory now.
“It was tiny,” Higbee said. “Physically it wasn’t tiny, but in storage capacity and ability, it was tiny.”
Higbee became an instructor at Oregon Institute of Technology, where he taught industrial management, after leaving the Air Force.
Danny Williams
Danny Williams and his mighty Chihuahua, Stormy, were on a mission Sunday morning to find Williams’ brick in Veterans Memorial Park.
Williams, a Vietnam-era veteran of the U.S. Navy, bought a brick in the park for the father of a friend. When he told her about the purchase, he was surprised to learn that she had bought a brick for him.
Williams served from 1972 to 1985, spending most of his time on ships as a hull technician. His welding experience carried him through civilian life, where he spent a total of 35 years as a welder.
“I spent my whole stint in the service on ships,” he said. Thanks to some experience deep-sea fishing, Williams already had his sea legs. But, he recalled, the Navy ships were a little different.
“We were in the Philippines and we got hit by a typhoon,” he said. “We had to go right back out to sea.”
Williams said he was 17 when he did his first tour in Vietnam.
“What a wake-up call,” he said. “It was horrific. Thank God I was over there for the end of it.”
After becoming disabled at his job as a welder, Williams has decided to return to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor. He appreciated the memorial.
“They’ve really done a nice job here,” he said. “It’s nice they’re doing something for the vets.”
Bob Reinke
Bob Reinke, 64, served in the U.S. Navy during a period of transition in the 1960s. The Vietnam War was ending and the Cold War was just starting. The U.S. Navy had both World War II-era submarines in use as well as nuclear-powered ones. Reinke said comforts were much different between the two.
The conventional submarines were hard living, Reinke said. They were hot, cramped and old. The nuclear subs, which Reinke was assigned to during the latter part of his duty, were used during Cold War missions.
“We were following Russian subs around,” he said. “We were there when the Pueblo was captured. That got very tense.”
The USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea in January 1968, and 82 of its 83 crewmembers were held captive for 11 months. One crewmember was killed.
The Cold War was a time of spying and intimidation, Reinke said. “It was like playing chess, a global chess game.”
Reinke found a brick with his name on it Sunday afternoon with his wife, Debbie, who bought the brick for him for his birthday.
“It’s kind of a funny feeling, I guess,” he said. “This spans a lot of wars. These bricks have a lot of stories, some good, some bad. You try to remember the good.”
The good things Reinke remembers are the closeness of the crews, the peacefulness of being deep in the ocean, and the taste of fresh baked bread.
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